"Everything Moves,
But Nothing Is Alive,"
Commonweal, September 1957:"This is an exciting book to read; it
meets head-on all the difficulties which confront the novelist today and
surmounts them. It promotes admiration as well as disagreement."View: Page
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3

"Flings of the Frantic,"
Newsweek,
September 9, 1957:"In the end, the only thing that prevents
On
the Road from careening headlong off into the trash heap is the sheer
impetus of novelist Kerouac's fast-tempoed, bop-beat prose."View: Page
1

"The Ganser Syndrome,"
Time,
September 9, 1957:"...Kerouac has
a Wolfelike love of the U.S. and a Whitmanesque weakness for cataloguing
nearly every experience. His novel is partly an ingenuous travel book,
partly a collection of journalistic jottings about adventures that are
known to everyone who has ever hitchhiked more than a hundred miles in
the U.S. The books' importance lies in Author Kerouac's attempt to create
a rationale for the fevered young who twitch around the nation's jukeboxes
and brawl pointlessly in the midnight streets."View: Page
1

"Reader's Choice,"
Atlantic
Monthly, October 1957:"Mr. Kerouac has
a distinctive style, part severe simplicity, part hep-cat jargon, part
baroque fireworks. He uses each of these elements with a sure touch, works
innumerable combinations and contrasts with them, and never slackens the
speed of his narrative which proceeds, like Dean at the wheel, at a steady
hundred and ten miles an hour."View: Page
1Page 2

Harpers,
October 1957:"Home-made mysticism
has produced a lot of bad writing, and Kerouac's book has most of the characteristic
faults....Yet On the Road has a good deal more to say than the 297th
novel about a vice president who wants to be a president or the 410th novel
about decadence on the old plantation. There is vigor in the book, and
a wide-openness to experience that keeps it alive."View: Page
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3

Playboy,
November 1957:"[On the Road]
is a disturbing book, a sharpie's travelog full of literary Weltschmerz,
jazz slanguage and the frenetic doings of a bunch of sensitive, pathetic--but
interesting--cats.View: Page
1Page 2

"Hip, Cool, Beat--and
Frantic," The Nation, November 16, 1957:"Despite its drag
race of words and gestures, On the Road does nothing, thinks nothing,
acts nothing, but yet manages to be a book after all--a loving portrait
of hip Dean Moriarty and his beat, cool friends as they run 110 miles an
hour in order to stand still. It's a frantic book, and for that reason
thee is hope for Jack Kerouac."View: Page
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7

Related Articles

"Aftermath: The
Philosophy of the Beat Generation," Esquire, March 1958:Kerouac explains
the purpose of the Beats as well as their legacy.View: Page
1Page 2

"King of the Beats,"
Commonweal,
January 2, 1959:"What sets Kerouac
apart from the "writer writers," and makes his voice carry despite its
comparative frailty and childishness, is that he has the courage to put
down the unaccustomed rhythym and details of the frantic modern scene exactly
the way he's lived it. This may not be a literary achievement which
will survive beyond the present. But can we be sure what will?View: Page
1Page 2

"The Origins of
the Beat Generation," Playboy, June 1959:Kerouac describes
the Beats and their beginnings.View: Page
1Page 2Page
3Page 4

"The Great Western
Bus Ride," Esquire, March 1970:In "The Great Western
Bus Ride," Kerouac goes on the road once again.View: Page
1Page 2

"Beatnik: The Magazine
for Hipsters," Mad, September 1960:"Mad presents its
version of a magazine written by the Beat Generation which really defends
the movement...the movement to abolish it!"View: Page
1Page 2Page
3Page 4Page
5Page 6

Chicago,
Illinois

"Living it Up With
Jack Kerouac," Chicago Tribune, October 6, 1957:"Kerouac possesses
a powerful talent, but it is as yet completely uncontroled. He can slip
from magniloquent hysteria into sentimental bathos, and at his worst he
merely slobbers words. His best, however, makes it clear that he is a writer
to watch."View: Page
1

New
York City, New York

Reviews

"Books of the Times,"
New
York Times, September 5, 1957:"On the Road
is the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance
yet made by the generation Keroauc himself named years ago as "beat," and
whose principal avatar he is. Just as, more than any other novel of the
Twenties,
The Sun Also Rises came to be regarded as the testament
of the "Lost Generation," so it seems certain that On the Road will
come ot be known as that of the "Beat Generation."View: Page
1

"In Pursuit of Kicks,"
New
York Times Book Review, September 8, 1957:"Jack Kerouac has
written an enormously readable and entertaining book but one reads it in
the same mood that he might visit a sideshow--the freaks are fascinating
although they are hardly part of our lives....On the Road is a stunning
achievement. But it is a road, as far as the characters are concerned,
that leads nowhere--and which the novelist himself cannot afford to travel
more than once."View: Page
1

"Restless Rebels
in Search of--What?" New York Herald Tribune, September 15, 1957:"Quite apart from
its characterizations, which are given and illustrated rather than developed,
the chief distinction of this novel is its sentimental emotion. Certainly,
On
the Road is a romantic treatment of delinquency and, as such, is considerable
interest."View: Page
1

"Cozzens and Others,"
Hudson
Review, Winter 1957-1958:"The book's claims
have to be acknowledged: one of our Quality Magazines speaks of it as a
work of great vigor and drive, and, considering its author's relations
with the West Coast howlers, to ignore it would be to ignore a New School....Plainly
this kind of writing makes it readers feel badly--not crude, to be sure
(distinctions are possible at any level), but rather (putting it with precision)
like a slob running a temperature of 103.6."View: Page
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Related Articles

"Back to the Village--But
Still on the Road," Village Voice, September 18, 1957:Kerouac comments
on the popularity of On the Road, as well his West Coast following.View: Page
1Page 2

"The Beat Debated--Is
It or Is It Not?" Village Voice, November 19, 1958:Discussion of the
Hunter College Playhouse's debate, "Is There a Beat Generation," including
Kerouac's contributions.View: Page
1Page 2

"Jack Kerouac: Off
the Road, Into the Vanguard, and Out," Village Voice, December 25,
1957:Account of Kerouac's
visit to the Village Vanguard.View: Page
1Page 2

"On the Sidewalk,"
New
Yorker, February 21, 1959:John Updike's own
version of On the Road.View: Page
1

Virginia Quarterly
Review, 1958:"Out of the bubble
and squeak of [Kerouac's] turbulent prose it is possible to discern the
pathetic despair, anxiety, and frustrations characteristic of our age,
at least among egocentric young people, content to substitute sensations
of the moment for experience, prudence, or self-discipline."View: Page
1

Washington,
D.C.

"Vocal, the Frantic
Fringe," Washington Post, September 8, 1957:"Throbbing, undirected
and irresponsible energy is the distinguishing characteristic of this second
novel by [Kerouac]....If he does not over-experience, does not rush too
fast, if he develops some direction and purpose, he will blast his own
niche in the pyramid of American letters."View: Page
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International

"Three Novels,"
Tamarack
Review (Toronto, Canada), August 1958:"[On the Road]
is a literary curiosity, an extraordinary tour de force, which attempts
to put into words longings and needs unsuccessfully ignored by our civilization,
except perhaps in its music. It is an ironical paradox that for most
of the characters most of the 'kicks' they get from life come from motion
in a powerful car, from the most familiar symbol of the civilization they
reject."View: Page
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"The Beat Boys,"
Sunday
Times (London), May 28, 1958:"Already in a secure
niche in the American literary vernacular, [the word "beat"] may very likely
catch on on this side with the publicatin of Jack Kerouac's On the Road.
For Kerouac is the chronicler--if not indeed the prophet--of the beat generation.
And his picareque, biting and sometimes mystical book is the required text."View: Page
1

"New Novels," Listener
(London), May, 29, 1958:"Before he is halfway
through the book, the reader, dragged helplessly at the tail of Dean's
car, feels like dropping off and having a quiet sleep in the nearest ditch.
If he remains giddily on the track, it is probably because this is in its
way a good travel book which does give a vivid impression of teh sweep
and variety of the North American continent."View: Page
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"Adolescence and
Maturity," Encounter (London), August 1958:"Mr. Kerouac writes
like a poster-artist of the old school, in crude, slapped-on primary colours.
His "Method" lacks all subtlety and precision, and what is in his characters
is not life but the jerking, galvanic activity of marionettes....There
is no development, and although the prose is obviously meant to be pretty
hot stuff it is lacking all wit, irony, objectivity, or sympathy, and for
all its torrent of words is about as expressive as a series of neanderthal
grunts."View: Page
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3

Meanjin (Victoria,
Australia), December 1959:"[On the Road
is not] a work of great artistic merit, nor is it an articulate manifesto.
But it renders protest, important protest, of a kind that is truly frightening."View: Page
1